Roger Hedgecock: Advice from Realville

When the daily political and economic news makes you feel like you’re living in a Matrix movie, take a deep breath and let fly with some common sense advice from Realville, from the daily life and experience of everyday Americans like you.

Here are a few examples. It’s fun. And it may change some minds.

Example one: Our political elites have taken this “living in a bubble” thing too far.

According to his host, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, President Obama could not eat lunch at a private gathering of Senators on Capitol Hill last week because “he has to have a taster” or he cannot eat.

A taster? Is this the president of the U.S. or the 16th-century Borgia pope?

Sen. Collins told the president that the senators were his tasters. They were eating the same lobster salad lunch and none of them had “keeled over.”

Realville advice: Sure you need to be careful, Mr. Obama, especially around Republican senators and especially on the Ides of March. But try to get out a little more like that time you took the president of Russia out for burgers.

Example two: The National Football League is not immune to living in a parallel universe either.

A new proposed NFL rule would make it a foul for a ball carrier to smash into a defender with the crown of his helmet in an open-field tackle situation.

Football is supposed to be a brute physical contest between young, highly trained athletes in their prime. Nobody forced these athletes to play the game for the millions of dollars they make and no player is ignorant of the physical toll the game takes.

Example three: Whoever announces the “inflation rate” definitely does not live in the real world.

Last week, the headline announced a 0.7 percent inflation rate for February, or 8.4 percent annualized.

Not to worry, said the article – it was only one month and the “experts” were still forecasting less than 2 percent inflation for the year.

Realville advice: The “experts” should shop at a grocery store and pump their own gas at least once a week.

For years now, the contents of packages at the grocery have been shrinking while prices have been going up.

The cheap corn in your morning flakes gets more expensive by the month as more of that corn goes into our gas tank as ethanol.

Really? Chicago has the toughest gun-control laws of any city in the country in a state with the toughest gun-control laws of any state in the country.

Until a recent Supreme Court ruling, you couldn’t even buy or possess a handgun in Chicago. There are no gun stores, no gun ranges, and no gun clubs in Chicago. “Military-style assault weapons” are strictly verboten.

Chicago also has the nation’s worst gun violence. Even by Chicago standards. In 2012, more than 500 people, including 62 under the age of 18, were killed by modern drug gangsters with guns in Chicago.

More Chicagoans were killed by gunfire in February than the peak of the Prohibition gangster era in 1929 when the famous Valentine’s Day Massacre became part of the Chicago legend.

More laws have produced more gun violence in Chicago, but Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel demands new gun-control laws anyway.

Realville advice: Put aside your blinders, Mr. Mayor, for just a moment and look at the facts. Any place you look where law-abiding citizens have the right to “keep and bear arms,” the crime rate is low. Because the bad guys fear their potential victims could be armed and shoot back.

And BTW, how did we allow politicians who are guarded by armed agents talk us into guarding our kids at the government school with a “gun-free zone” sign in the window?

See how easy and fun this is?

The next time you see a ridiculous story on the TV, read another outrageous article in the U-T or hear some nanny-state politician on the radio during your commute, speak up, send an email, write a letter to the editor.

Do whatever you can to bring the common sense of realville to those who obviously need it.

Hedgecock hosts a news talk program on U-TTV, Cox channel 114, AT&T channels 17 and 1017, and on utsandiego.com.